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Does lotro now require a 64 bit OS ?

Firstly, I'm a casual player and have recently got the lotro bug again so much so that I purchased a quest pack and bought RoR edition for extra/new content. I have been VIP before and would like to do so again for more content but ever since I installed RoR and some recent patches the client crashes, with alarming regularity. It is better in non mounted combat regions it seems but can still crash. Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings but it has got me killed on numerous occasions as well.

I have searched for possible causes and solutions and read so much that my eyes hurt. End result is that I am non the wiser for a solution and have an endless list of possible causes. Generally it seems to be a popular opinion that it is a memory problem and the magic number seems to be less than 3 gig available causing the problems. There are various tricks and ways suggested to enable more than 3 gig memory in a 32 bit OS but having tried them all with no success I am resigned to not fixing it with my current setup. Having also read that 32 bit OS's cannot ever really access more than 3 gig of memory, if this is the cause of the problems, then the only way I can fix it is to upgrade my OS. Hence the question in the title, if this is so are the min requirement for lotro now that you require a 64 bit OS because a 32 bit OS just can't give you enough memory.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

My dilemmas are, do I buy a 64 bit OS in the hope that it will fix the problem? Do I go VIP or purchase future content? I know the problem is not limited to just me but I have yet to read of someone having the same problem and fixing it. Has anyone actually solved this problem and if so how did you do it? Do I just give up on the game and find something else? (I'd hate for that to be the solution).

Please post a reply if you have some constructive info etc. Meanwhile, I'll log back in again and carry on with Hytbold rebuild....

Firstly, I'm a casual player and have recently got the lotro bug again so much so that I purchased a quest pack and bought RoR edition for extra/new content. I have been VIP before and would like to do so again for more content but ever since I installed RoR and some recent patches the client crashes, with alarming regularity. It is better in non mounted combat regions it seems but can still crash. Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings but it has got me killed on numerous occasions as well.

I have searched for possible causes and solutions and read so much that my eyes hurt. End result is that I am non the wiser for a solution and have an endless list of possible causes. Generally it seems to be a popular opinion that it is a memory problem and the magic number seems to be less than 3 gig available causing the problems. There are various tricks and ways suggested to enable more than 3 gig memory in a 32 bit OS but having tried them all with no success I am resigned to not fixing it with my current setup. Having also read that 32 bit OS's cannot ever really access more than 3 gig of memory, if this is the cause of the problems, then the only way I can fix it is to upgrade my OS. Hence the question in the title, if this is so are the min requirement for lotro now that you require a 64 bit OS because a 32 bit OS just can't give you enough memory.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

My dilemmas are, do I buy a 64 bit OS in the hope that it will fix the problem? Do I go VIP or purchase future content? I know the problem is not limited to just me but I have yet to read of someone having the same problem and fixing it. Has anyone actually solved this problem and if so how did you do it? Do I just give up on the game and find something else? (I'd hate for that to be the solution).

Please post a reply if you have some constructive info etc. Meanwhile, I'll log back in again and carry on with Hytbold rebuild....

LOTRO is a 32bit application, but a 64 bit OS will help a great deal as it will allow more memory overhead for your PC to work with. Even before Rohan released, we encouraged players to choose a 64 bit OS. Especially as Vista 32 bit had some known memory handling issues with 4GB or more total memory installed in a system.

Considering XP is no longer supported by Microsoft, upgrading your OS should probably be on your 'to do' list. Given that, since there is no price difference between a 32 and 64 bit version, go with the 64.

I know on my HD version of lotro, my memory puts lotro about 2.2GB of system RAM (non-gpu). 2.2 GB on a 32 bit OS (esp pre-Win 8) would virtually choke off the PC from the basic needs it has for normal system operations since 32 bit OSs are capped at 3.2GB system RAM. even if you have 4 GB of RAM, on a 32 bit OS, only 3.2 GB is available to use.

besides my gaming desktops, I have 1 lappy that has lotro installed, 32 bit Win 8. to help alleviate this memory problem, I installed the non-HD version (standard) version of LOTRO which uses less system resources.

Regardless end of support, if you have 2+ Gb RAM you will do yourself a huge favor by updating to windows 7 64bit. Forget Vista/windows 8. Windows 7 64bit is the XP of the moment, and is the win95 of the moment.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

I ran LotRO for quite some time on a barebones Pentium 4 3.0ghz, single-core, 32-bit, with 2gb of RAM and a 128mb business-class graphics card. I used Win7 32-bit instead of WinXP. I did have crashes once in a while, particularly during long periods of playtime, and more frequently in Dunland/GR/Rohan than in earlier areas.

But it was remarkably stable. I didn't use the computer for anything else -- all web browsing and other programs were done on a different computer. Literally, the only programs running were Windows, LotRO, and Synergy (a tiny software-KVM utility program).

One of the steps that I took to minimize crash potential was to regularly take breaks and restart the LotRO client. If I'd been playing for a couple of hours on one alt and intended to play for a while longer, I'd stop at a quest hub and exit / restart the client. If I'd been questing and was joining up for instances, I'd exit / restart the client. If I'd been working on one alt and planned to start working on another, I'd exit / restart the client. This helped keep memory leakage down to a minimum. It didn't prevent all crashes, but I didn't deal with daily crashes like some were reporting.

I used this setup until Jan 2013, when I built my current i5/Win8x64 system.

What I found was the Lotro did not run well on a 32-Bit OS if you had too much memory installed. It works best if you have 2 GBs. It tends to crash a lot on machines with 4 GBs. If you got 4 GB in your machine go to a 64bit OS. Or pull out 2 GB or perhaps I GB of your RAM.

Unless stated otherwise, all content in this post is My Personal Opinion.

With a 32 bit OS you will never use that 4 gig. You might have it, but it wont use it. With out a bit of tweaking that 32bit OS will never use more then 2 gig. More over that is a rather out dated card. When you step outside your comp has to render everything and your comp may not have the available ram to do it so crash.

So yes, before you spend another dime on upgrading that comp get W7 64bit. A new graphics card might help, expanding the ram will do you no good, so a new OS will give you the most bang for the buck.

With a 32 bit OS you will never use that 4 gig. You might have it, but it wont use it. With out a bit of tweaking that 32bit OS will never use more then 2 gig.

This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

Really the best answer here is to simply upgrade the OS to a supported 64 bit platform. We've had 64 bit CPU's for over a decade now, and 64-bit desktop Windows OSes for nearly 8 years now. The benefits of upgrading are many.

This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

Really the best answer here is to simply upgrade the OS to a supported 64 bit platform. We've had 64 bit CPU's for over a decade now, and 64-bit desktop Windows OSes for nearly 8 years now. The benefits of upgrading are many.

Actually LOTRO won't really make use of 4 gb of RAM anyway... 2 sounds more like it, unless theres some crazy stuff going on in the moors. If you're using a 32 bit OS though you are not only limited by your RAM but also by your paging file, which is absolutely important for a game like this one.

This is utterly untrue. The 32-bit editions of Windows (at least those derived from the NT kernel like 2000, XP, Vista, etc) have always been able to address 4GB of RAM. The reason this is confusing for so many people is that the 4GB total is allocated as 2GB for applications, and 2GB for the executive (think kernel). A 4GB machine running 32 bit windows will most definitely use all 4GB if it needs it. But your application (i.e., LotRO) can only get at 2GB of it. The other 2GB is off limits to the user space.

The 3GB switch mentioned above (and that Turbine recommends that you don't use) changes this arrangement to allow 3GB for user/app space and 1GB for the executive. As Sapience mentioned, using this can cause other problems and Microsoft only recommended that it be used in specific use cases.

No I'm afraid it is true that that the 32bit "consumer" versions can't use 4GB of RAM in practice. It is no weird glitch that the OP gets displayed 2.94GB of useable RAM. The reason for this is the PC architecture, communication with devices works through memory mapped I/O, that means part of the 4GB physical address space cannot be used for main memory because it is used to communicate with devices like the graphics card. Depending on configuration, more than 1GB become unavailable because of this.
This "masked" memory can only be used with memory remapping and, for a 32bit OS, PAE to extend the physical address space. And the latter is the problem, while all windows kernels since XP support PAE, only the server variants actually support accessing memory above the 4GB limit (so basically an artificial limitation).

This is all about physical addressing, the /3GB switch is a matter of virtual addressing. Virtual addressing is completely independent of the amount of RAM, and its limits are a matter of how it's implemented, but in a pure 32bit environment it is still impossible to give a process a flat 4GB virtual memory if it is supposed to run efficiently.

PyLotRO with Python 3.x support and bugfixes: [url]https://github.com/Lynx3d/pylotro[/url]

OS is xp 32 bit home edition.
// ...
I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it.

You cannot fix it : some memory leaks have been introduced with RoR, still not fixed, and the Memory Manager of XP 32-bit cannot manage them like the one on 64-bit OS.
You can easily see the VM of lotroclient.exe increase when the leak is fired...

Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings

Feel free to post answers in the technical forum and follow the sticky as much as possible (on how to post there).

Is this a crash to desktop or a bluescreen or a blackscreen?

Did you work through the connection sticky, especially the section on ports? (I'm mentioning ports especially because of the "most times" zoning crashes. This could be a second issue.)Is the lotro client added as an exception to your firewall, virus real time scanning, and any internet provider software?
Is this the only computer accessing lotro through your router? If so, did you port forward?
Are any ports blocked by internet/security software on your machine?

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

I run Win 7 Pro 32 bit and Win XP pro 32 bit (dual boot) and was experiencing the crashes you mentioned while only playing RoR content and going through doorways in RoI.

Scroll down for instructions for XP. I stopped crashing through doorways, whenever the music changes etc. Can play pretty much uninterrupted. I do kill all background apps i.e. no antivirus, music player just to minimize the amount of hitching that happens during mounted combat.

Hope this helps you some. Good luck!

Edit: I should mention that I play on Win 7 most of the time. I did try out RoR content in XP after the fix, and it works though.

Firstly, I'm a casual player and have recently got the lotro bug again so much so that I purchased a quest pack and bought RoR edition for extra/new content. I have been VIP before and would like to do so again for more content but ever since I installed RoR and some recent patches the client crashes, with alarming regularity. It is better in non mounted combat regions it seems but can still crash. Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings but it has got me killed on numerous occasions as well.

I have searched for possible causes and solutions and read so much that my eyes hurt. End result is that I am non the wiser for a solution and have an endless list of possible causes. Generally it seems to be a popular opinion that it is a memory problem and the magic number seems to be less than 3 gig available causing the problems. There are various tricks and ways suggested to enable more than 3 gig memory in a 32 bit OS but having tried them all with no success I am resigned to not fixing it with my current setup. Having also read that 32 bit OS's cannot ever really access more than 3 gig of memory, if this is the cause of the problems, then the only way I can fix it is to upgrade my OS. Hence the question in the title, if this is so are the min requirement for lotro now that you require a 64 bit OS because a 32 bit OS just can't give you enough memory.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

My dilemmas are, do I buy a 64 bit OS in the hope that it will fix the problem? Do I go VIP or purchase future content? I know the problem is not limited to just me but I have yet to read of someone having the same problem and fixing it. Has anyone actually solved this problem and if so how did you do it? Do I just give up on the game and find something else? (I'd hate for that to be the solution).

Please post a reply if you have some constructive info etc. Meanwhile, I'll log back in again and carry on with Hytbold rebuild....

I would recommend that you invest in a new OS.
XP is on it's last legs, as far as support is concerned.
I recommend that you get one of the Windows 7 64 bit versions. Usually, when you buy the Retail copy, you get both a 32 bit and a 64 bit disc.
Avoid Vista at all costs.
Personally, I have Windows 7 Ultimate, and this is likely the best Windows OS I've ever used.
I've not tried Windows 8 yet.

Hir i Meigol Bruinen/High Council Member of the EoI/Of the Exiles of the Hidden City/Meigol Bruinen, Uncle Seregnin's Misguided Children, Curse the name of Maeglin, the Treacherous Villain, forever, may he rot in the Halls of Mandos for all time....
Player Councillor. http://www.swtor.com/r/XWNQXP is my refer-a-friend link for SWTOR.

takes about a week to get used to the OS changes, but you'll see just as good, if not better gaming bench scores in Win 8 gaming environment. (my fps in games jumped 15% switching to Win 8 64 bit on the same machine).

and since Win 8 uses far less memory resources than Win 7, you'll have less demand from system processes on the CPU.

Thanks for all the useful replies and tips. It is about time I upgraded my OS, I've known that for awhile but XP has been good to me. I will go for a win 7 64 bit version, win 8 seems too much touchscreen based and some stuff I have read on it so far makes it look the poorer option when compared to win 7. Many thanks again to all posters

LOTRO is a 32bit application. Any memory above 4gb will not be usable by the application. However, a 64bit OS would have access to more than 4gb RAM. this would allow your other system processes to use the memory space above 4GB, which will free up memory for LOTRO to use.

It's possible that turbine may update this to 64bit, at some point, but given the age it's not likely.

LOTRO is a 32bit application. Any memory above 4gb will not be usable by the application. However, a 64bit OS would have access to more than 4gb RAM. this would allow your other system processes to use the memory space above 4GB, which will free up memory for LOTRO to use

But if they fix the memory leaks, it will work without crashing on a >10 years old PC with XP SP1 and DX 9.0
When you release correctly the allocated memory, you don't need GB of RAM...

Firstly, I'm a casual player and have recently got the lotro bug again so much so that I purchased a quest pack and bought RoR edition for extra/new content. I have been VIP before and would like to do so again for more content but ever since I installed RoR and some recent patches the client crashes, with alarming regularity. It is better in non mounted combat regions it seems but can still crash. Prior to installing RoR I had no problems at all and the client would rarely crash. Luckily most times it crashes now is in passive situations like entering or exiting buildings but it has got me killed on numerous occasions as well.

I have searched for possible causes and solutions and read so much that my eyes hurt. End result is that I am non the wiser for a solution and have an endless list of possible causes. Generally it seems to be a popular opinion that it is a memory problem and the magic number seems to be less than 3 gig available causing the problems. There are various tricks and ways suggested to enable more than 3 gig memory in a 32 bit OS but having tried them all with no success I am resigned to not fixing it with my current setup. Having also read that 32 bit OS's cannot ever really access more than 3 gig of memory, if this is the cause of the problems, then the only way I can fix it is to upgrade my OS. Hence the question in the title, if this is so are the min requirement for lotro now that you require a 64 bit OS because a 32 bit OS just can't give you enough memory.

I am interested to know if anyone else has had this problem on a 32 bit OS with RoR installed and have fixed it. Conversely, those that have no problems with RoR, are you running a similar setup to me?

My dilemmas are, do I buy a 64 bit OS in the hope that it will fix the problem? Do I go VIP or purchase future content? I know the problem is not limited to just me but I have yet to read of someone having the same problem and fixing it. Has anyone actually solved this problem and if so how did you do it? Do I just give up on the game and find something else? (I'd hate for that to be the solution).

Please post a reply if you have some constructive info etc. Meanwhile, I'll log back in again and carry on with Hytbold rebuild....

After Rohan I decided this game was unplayable on a 32 bit OS. I would definitely upgrade to a 64 one - else you are probably going to have horrific lag and constant crashes.